Dominion's Sprint/Oly/70.3 Group--Closed (Page 9)

I believe I'll have to pass on that.  I waited until the warmest part of the afternoon today to get my run in at 38 degrees.  Wasn't fun.

The Florida Sea to Sea 72 hour race is what we have on our radar (2016).  It's Coast to Coast, no set trail.  I think there are around 80 Control Points in all you can acquire.  I'd want to do a few shorter races first, probably a 12 hour and then a 24-30 hour as prep before biting off something as big as the Sea to Sea.  My brother is down, so we just need to find a 3rd teammate, preferably somebody with a little experience at this type of racing.  http://www.floridasea2sea.com/home.html

Originally posted by scottjjmtri99 Wow. Rough week here. To add to the cold and blowing snow kids decided to get sick yet again. They were sick last weekend and appeared to be back to normal until Thursday. Between dealing with that and then my wife catching a version of something too I've been left to keep things going. We thought that the kids were back to normal yesterday. They woke up chipper and running around rather happy. COOL! We'll be able to go to the in-laws and I'll be able to get a good swim in and all that good stuff. I get back to the inlaws with Subway for lunch and then the plan was to swim at the college a mile away. Well, thats when things went bad. My daughter started complaining about her ear and was a crap, My boy wasn't eating and next thing I know he has a mess that I'll let ya'll use your imagination as it was just too gross to describe. My wife takes off with the car to take my daughter for her ears and my shot at swimming is done. So, kids seem to be better today. But I'm not holding my breath. There is hope I'll make it to a pool this afternoon, but it's a small glimmer. Hope ya'll are able to follow your plans and had a great weekend! This weekend has been one to be forgotten so far lol. Scott

Hang in there Scott.  You've made a ton of progress this year and this week is only a minor setback.  Do what you can do and know better days are ahead!

I always negative split runs.  Swimming I usually go out fairly hard and maybe slow a little throughout.  Cycling is usually pushing hard the whole way, not so much a negative split but trying to hold on as the miles pile up.

 Any other thoughts on this?

I was always an even pace kind of runner, hold the same pace all the way through. Over the last couple of years I've been trying to do more negative splits during a race, particularly the run. However I haven't seen many, if any, training plans that practice a neg. split. You still have the warm up, intervals, or hills, speed, fartlek, or whatever, then a cool down. A negative split is something that needs to be practiced!

Anyway, my last couple of half marathons, one was a 70.3, worked out really well running a neg. I didn't get the redundancy feeling I did when holding an even pace for that long and I was able to finished much stronger (it was fun passing the people who passed me earlier, many now walking). Not only did I finish stronger but I still had fuel left in the tank. So I could have gone harder. I've never bonked in a race but many say this will prevent that from happening while giving you a faster finishing time. True, it's not easy sticking to your plan at the start but it can pay off in the end!

Google "why is it best to run a negative split?" and you'll find lots of articles on it.

Oh, some of you will get a kick out of hearing that we got hit with ice and freezing temps (26*F) Monday.  I don't run or ride on ice and gym has been closed for two days!!  Now we're looking at 2" of snow tonight.  It was a ghost town going to work yesterday, lol.

This is key.  Knowing when to increase the pace and go hard enough to not have much left in the tank.  I think it takes a lot of practice in training and racing to know your body, your pace, and your distance well enough to know just where that point is.  To go near the edge but not past it.  This is probably one reason why negative splits work so well for me in running, but not as well in swimming or cycling.  I just don't have all those years and miles built into my swimming and cycling that I do from so many past years of running.  I find the treadmill is a great tool for developing pace as well.  Like Randy said in the last post, the treadmill allows you to start at a pace and gradually increase throughout and end strong.  I too always have an increasing pace pre-planned going into each treadmill session. Due to my work situation I usually run 2-3 times per week on the treadmill, so that type of pacing gets pretty ingrained.

So to answer the original question, I don't think there is anything wrong with a vast majority of your training being negative split.  Just get comfortable enough to know where your boundaries are, and then use it even while racing.  Start  out steady and slowly build to the fastest pace you feel like you can hold for the distance of the session (race), then hold it until you are close enough that you are ready to increase again and push to the end.  This may be 1/2 mile, 1/4 mile, 1 mile, 100 yards, it's whatever your are comfortable with.  Again it takes some practice and experience to get closer to that edge and we probably never get it perfect.

Her's some mid-week motivation for you and it kind of ties in with negative splits.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgdFrUjKppQ